


the stars are bright, but they're not warm

by apotheotic



Series: punching people, solving mysteries: the space AU [2]
Category: X-Factor (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Continuation, Casual Sex, Complicated Relationships, F/F, F/M, Found Families, Friends With Benefits, Kate has a complicated relationship with everyone, M/M, Pining, Relationship Advice, Relationship Problems, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apotheotic/pseuds/apotheotic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lightyears away from Earth, Kate's new team helps her work through homesickness and unresolved issues with her former partner - whether they realize they're doing it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stars are bright, but they're not warm

**Author's Note:**

> set in [kingcronut's](http://kingcronut.tumblr.com) [space](http://hurm.co.vu/post/100734353159/thinking-about-interdimensional-intergalactic) [au](http://hurm.co.vu/post/101178357709/) where ric, shatterstar, kate and america form an intergalactic ass kicking/mystery solving team.

It’s a good night, all things considered.

The team is in between jobs, drifting through a lull of relatively asteroid-free space and enjoying a couple days of well-earned relaxation. Rictor and ‘Star are distracted with doing…well, probably what Rictor and ‘Star are _totally_ not subtle about doing pretty much anytime they manage to get some free time to themselves, and America is taking her shift at the controls. Kate has Tommy pulled up in skype and the two of them are lounging around, mostly naked, Tommy on the couch in his cramped apartment and Kate nestled in her bunk below America’s empty one.

They do this sometimes, just sit and enjoy each other’s presence on the other end of the signal, not needing to talk or do anything but listen to one another breathe. It’s comforting just to know he’s there.

They do the other thing, too. The thing they just did, the thing that’s the reason Kate’s only got her bra on and Tommy has a blanket pulled haphazardly over his lap. It’s convenient and familiar and not as good as the real thing, but it’s comforting too, in its own way. It feels alright. Kate’s not sure what she and America are - if they’re anything, aside from partners in marginally-legal-space-heroism - and Tommy’s available and just as lonely as Kate gets sometimes. Besides that, he’s her best friend, if she wanted to prioritize her friendships like that. She doesn’t.

“You still get the news out there?” Tommy asks suddenly. Kate thinks she sees him fiddling with his phone, but it’s too fast to tell.

“Yeah, why?”

“Looks like your boyfriend got into it with some drug smuggling ring downtown. And - get this - they had to clear a whole city block.” There’s the sound of snickering, staticky, slightly out of synch with his crooked grin. “Kinda makes you miss the good old days, huh?

“Not really,” retorts Kate, suddenly testy. “And he’s not my boyfriend. He’s not even - I mean, we weren’t talking a lot. Before I left.”

“Ahhh,” Tommy says sagely, and nods. He’s clearly going for some kind of wise and experienced love-guru thing, but the effect is completely ruined by the fact that he’s wearing a dinosaur-patterned blanket over his lap and one corner of the screen is conspicuously occupied by a box of tissues. “So it’s complicated.”

“It’s not complicated. We just - you know, people fight sometimes. It happens.”

“You and _me_ don’t fight.”

It’s a fair point, but Kate still scoffs. “You and I don’t expect anything from each other, either. We’re just...you know. Friends. Who screw around sometimes. But we’re _clear_ about that.”

“Have you ever seen a romantic comedy? That’s basically the definition of ‘it’s complicated’.”

“We’re not a romantic anything, so it’s _not_ complicated.”

Usually Kate wishes Tommy were physically with her so she could hug him or curl up against his side and feel the quick, mathematically precise beat of his heart. Right now she really just wants to be able to throw something at his head.

On her handheld comm screen, he makes an expansive shrugging gesture.

“So...what were you guys fighting about?” he asks finally. Now he’s picking at the blanket, looking between his hands and her face like he thinks she might tell him to fuck off. Kate sighs and leans back, running a hand through her hair.

“Honestly, I don’t even remember. Isn’t that terrible? It was just something stupid, like maybe he forgot to pick up the dog’s poop or he left a bunch of hair all over the sink, but it blew up into this whole big thing about how I can’t deal with a guy who acts like an immature teenager and then turns around and tries to treat me like a little kid.”

Tommy whistles. “Ouch. Did you _say_ that to him?”

“Not exactly in so many words, but I’m pretty sure he got the drift.”

“And then you left.”

“Yeah.” Kate remembers _that_ part clearly enough: stomping around his apartment throwing her stuff into a bag, Lucky following nervously at her heels, Clint parked in the same spot he’d been in since they had the argument, beer in hand, shoulders slumped and head down. “It’s not even like he kicked me out or anything. He just told me I didn’t have to stick around if I hated it that much. Like he’d just been waiting for me to give up and leave the whole time or something. Like it was inevitable.”

Even the memory makes her furious, and sickly guilty, and sad. She drops her head back against the wall with a thump. Tommy makes a sympathetic noise, and she wonders if he’s wishing he could put his arms around her shoulders like she is.

“Well, the guy’s got serious issues if he’d let a girl like you walk on him,” he says finally. “My advice would be forget about his loser ass and find yourself some hot space tail. Or a guy that treats you the way you wanna be treated. Or isn’t _a hundred_.”

“He’s not that old, Tommy.”

“Yeah, but that’s why he treats you like a kid. Did you even talk about that? Or did you just shout at each other about dog shit or whatever?”

“It wasn’t really a talk,” Kate admits. “We never got any of it worked out. I just took off to get some space, and then…” She gestures to the room around her. “All this stuff happened.” With a sigh, she wraps her arms around her knees. “There’s some things I really wish I’d told him. It’s not even like I think he’d have changed if I did, you know? I just hate having it sitting on my chest.”

Tommy is silent for an uncharacteristically long moment. Then he jumps up, and all Kate can see are his bare legs as he shouts, “I got it! You should write him a letter!”

Kate eyes Tommy’s kneecaps incredulously. “From space.”

“Okay, so e-mail, whatever. But I mean, if it was me, I’d at least - ”

Abruptly, the skype connection stutters and Tommy’s face goes glitchy, then cuts out completely. A second later there’s a roar from the direction of the engine room like an animal dying, followed by a streak of furious swearing in Spanish. Kate sighs, pulls a pair of pants on and goes to see what’s the matter with their ship.

-

A few days after that, she’s alone at the control panel, watching the uneventful drift of dead space and monitoring the comm channels. She hasn’t had a chance to catch Tommy again, but his suggestion is sitting at the back of her mind. What kind of letter would she even write? ‘Hi Clint, sorry the last time we saw each other was such a clusterfuck, and then I ditched you like I said I wouldn’t do again’? ‘P.S. here’s everything I couldn’t just tell you like a civilized person, I want you to know it even though we might not actually ever be on the same planet again’? ‘I think maybe I’m in love with you and it scares the crap out of me’?

It’s absurd.

Still, after everything, part of her knows she at least owes it to Clint to try. Because they were partners, even if it was hard on both of them a lot of the time, and even if Clint being _Clint_ completely screwed it up in the end. And she owes him because she knows she’s partly responsible for screwing things up, too.

With a nervous stomach, Kate finds herself bringing up the comm screen and opening a message, addressing it to him.

 _Clint,_ she types, then has to stop to think.

_How’s everything going back home?_

She erases that, disgusted with the banality of it, and scowls at the screen for another good five minutes. Then:

_I hope you’re doing okay._

That’s no good either. She knows Clint; she knows he’s not.

_Are you feeding the dog?_

_Did you ever get that busted pipe fixed?_

None of it is what she really wants to say, and in a fit of pique, Kate jabs the kill switch on the comm station and watches in satisfaction as its screen goes blank, taking with it all of her dishonest words. She _knows_ what she wants to say. She can’t say that, though. It’s not the kind of thing you send in an e-mail when you haven’t talked to somebody in months.

If she’s smart, it’s not the kind of thing she’ll say ever.

-

After two more days they still haven’t found any new jobs to take, and Kate’s beginning to go stir crazy. She still hasn’t written to Clint, either.

The best distraction is usually to train, something she learned when she was fifteen and had a lot bigger things to get off her mind than stupid complicated Clint Barton, so she finds Rictor and drags him to the captain’s cabin they repurposed into a sparring room, by virtue of it being the biggest space on the ship. If he picks up on the fact that there’s more to it than her just wanting to stay in fighting shape, he doesn’t say anything, which is one of the things she loves about Rictor. He gets when to back off.

He’s a good sparring partner, too, because the two of them are evenly matched: he might have twenty pounds and a few inches on her, but it’s not the bone-splintering super-strength that America and Shatterstar pack. Still, he’s tough, and fast, and he has a heavy right hook that keeps her on her toes avoiding it too much to think.

In other words, he’s exactly what she needs right now.

They trade kicks and punches for a while, fighting clean through the first two rounds (one to Kate, one to Rictor) and then fighting dirty. It’s not the rough scramble of a real fight, but Rictor never seems to mind if he actually gets hurt, even in sparring, so neither of them pulls their punches either.

Things turn messy fast. Rictor catches her in the jaw and she nails him in the jewels, which she feels bad about because it reminds her of the time Clint had to sit on a bag of ice for a whole day after she kneed him with all the force she could muster, right between the legs. In her defense, he’d had her pinned and she’d panicked, but Rictor didn’t do anything except dodge the wrong way. Kate shakes the thought of Clint off and tries to figure out if she’s put Ric down for the count.

The guilt lasts maybe half a second before he sweeps her legs out from underneath her and kneels down, off to one side but with an elbow braced over her left shoulder, keeping her on the metaphorical mat. He cocks an eyebrow at her expressively.

“What’s up with you today, _chica_? You’re acting like your head’s somewhere else.”

“Don’t call me ‘chica’,” Kate huffs, hooking her foot behind his knee. She flips them over. “America does that. It’s weird coming from you.”

Rictor laughs and raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay.”

She climbs off of him and offers him a hand up, and when he offers to go another round, she waves him off. Sparring isn’t working; thoughts about Clint are still creeping in at the edges, distracting her from what was supposed to be a distraction in the first place. The frustration must show on her face, because Rictor drops a casual hand on her shoulder and says,

“You sure everything’s good?”

This is why she came to him. He treats things with an easy nonchalance that doesn’t suffocate her the way Shatterstar’s overly solicitous (but, to be fair, _gorgeous_ ) concern does.

“Yeah,” Kate tells him, opening a pouch of water and taking a long pull before passing it over. Rictor watches her a little skeptically out of the corner of his eye as he drinks. In a moment of lapsed judgment, she adds, “What would you do if you left things off in a bad place with somebody important?”

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now.

Rictor’s eyebrows climb and he makes a thoughtful ‘hunh’ sound. “I don’t know. I guess I’d let them have as much space as they needed and then try to work it out. This about somebody back on Earth?”

“Well, it’s not about America,” she shoots back. Kate suddenly realizes it’s easier to have a conversation with him when they’re punching each other, and she’s not sure what that says about them.

The exchange hangs halted awkwardly between them for a minute or two. Kate can tell Rictor’s figured out she’s not going to volunteer any more information, and unlike Tommy, he’s not the kind of guy willing to pull teeth to get to the bottom of something when she doesn’t want to talk. She figures he’ll leave it there, with a piece of generic advice she can’t really use, and that’s fine.

It’s a surprise when he stops in the middle of toweling off the back of his neck and says, “A long time ago, me and ‘Star spent a long time apart. Like, almost a year. We were both pretty fucked up about it, you know?”

Kate just nods, listening intently. Rictor rarely talks about anything before the four of them met.

“The night I came back, it was like - we fit right back together, _no problemo_. That’s how it is when somebody’s that important. You figure it out.”

“I said some pretty nasty things to this guy.”

To her surprise, Rictor smiles, the kind of gentle, sympathetic smile she’s usually seen him use when ‘Star is being obtuse about something that should be obvious to anyone human.

“Then you should just _talk_ to him. Tell him you’re not pissed off anymore. Be honest.” He claps her on the back, just briefly, but it feel like the equivalent of a bear hug coming from him. “You’ll figure out what to do.”

-

The honest truth is, Kate can’t say she’s not pissed off anymore.

She wants to not be stuck in an indefinite limbo where for all intents and purposes their status is “fighting”, and she wants to forgive Clint for being such a dumbass about everything, and she wants to be forgiven for the things she said. It would be nice to go back to the way things were, too. But that’s the problem: things being the way they were is what made her blow up at him to begin with. And she’s angry, in a way it won’t do any good to try to talk herself out of, that Clint won’t _try_ to see things a different way. That he won’t do it for her.

She’d do it for him, Kate thinks. She’d do _anything_ for him.

So that’s how she winds up in the bar with America and Shatterstar, the two of them with their super-metabolisms already buzzed and Kate well on her way to being, as Tommy would sarcastically put it, “completely turnt”.

“I hate men!” she declares sincerely. If she were less drunk, she’d probably have the presence of mind to be glad that Rictor is at the bar ordering their next round, because she doesn’t mean him. Or maybe she’d have the presence of mind not to say it in the first place. She glances over at ‘Star, who’s nodding thoughtfully, and adds, “Not you, though.”

“No, you have a point,” ‘Star agrees earnestly, leaning across the table to be heard.

The music is strange and wonderful and deafening, and Kate loves it out here in space, where nothing is familiar and it doesn’t _have_ to be about Clint but somehow she keeps making it that way.

She slumps over against America’s shoulder and groans into the soft, spicy-sweet-smelling fabric. America pats her back a little condescendingly, but it’s a fond kind of condescension, the same kind as when she calls Kate _princess_. Across the table, Shatterstar has launched into an enthusiastic dissertation on the various ways men can be objectionable, but also wonderful and quite pleasant to have around. It’s clear he’s trying to be sympathetic but hasn’t quite made up his mind on the subject, and America is rolling her eyes at him and making little ‘blah, blah’ motions with her hands.

Kate loves these people, she realizes.

For a long time, the only place she felt secure in calling home was with Clint, and maybe that’s why it shook her so deeply to uproot herself from that. But she feels the same sense of home right now, and she knows it’s not something that’s just going to fade when the alien booze has worked its way out of her system.

She’s about to say something about it - to announce this revolutionary new feeling to America and ‘Star, or to the bar at large - when Rictor suddenly materializes out of the crowd. He has four drinks balanced precariously in his hands which he sets down and slides in next to ‘Star, who’s moved on from the social pros and cons of the male gender to a comparison of the good and bad qualities of every male lover he’s ever had. If nobody stops him, he’ll probably go on for hours; he gets like that when he’s buzzed. Kate grins into her drink. The look on Rictor’s face could peel paint.

‘Star, fondly reminiscing about one particularly successful encounter, continues obliviously until Rictor slams his drink back and cuts in icily.

“So did I miss the part where you tell _la maldita cantina entera_ about my failings as a lover,” he says, voice rising on each syllable as he switches into Spanish, “or were you still getting to that? _Vete a la chingada_ , 'Star!” He slaps a hand down on the table, and the whole room rattles in response. Then he stands abruptly, yanks his jacket out from where Shatterstar is half-sitting on it, and storms off through the crowd of dancing, startled patrons.

Looking equally startled and even more confused, ‘Star glances around at Kate and America as if to say _what did I do?_ before jumping up and running after Rictor, shouting “Julio! I’m sorry, I did not mean to offend you, _sinceramente no quería herir sus sentimientos, por favor_ \- ”

The stream of Spanish mixes with something Kate recognizes as ‘Star’s native language, then gets lost completely as the bar-noise grows louder and swallows it up.

“You’re right. Men are such _babies_ ,” America sighs, rolling her eyes, and slaps a wad of cash down on the table. “Come on, princess, let’s go after them before they destroy something big and expensive, like a building.”

-

Later, crammed into the back of a taxi with her unlikely team, on the way back to their ship and the endless stretch of space that won’t go on forever no matter how much it looks like it from here, Kate half-sleeps against the window and thinks again about love and forgiveness.

At the opposite end of the seat are ‘Star and Rictor, both of them silent, sitting perfectly still.

They’d been stopped under the pink glow of a streetlight to shout at each other - Rictor angry, ‘Star frustrated and imploring - when she and America caught up with them earlier, and haven’t said a word to each other since. But it’s a long ride back to the space dock where the ship is parked, and at some point they leaned more towards each other than away.

On the pockmarked vinyl between them, Kate can see their hands, linked loosely, fingers intertwined. Every so often Rictor brushes his thumb over Shatterstar’s knuckles.

Tomorrow morning they’ll both have forgotten about the transgression completely. ‘Star will probably do something similar again at some point, because that’s how he is, and he tries to be considerate but there are some things in his nature that don’t perfectly match up with Rictor’s. There are some things about him that might never change, and it doesn’t mean he isn’t trying. Rictor will lose his temper and swear and maybe refuse to speak to him for a day or two, because there are some things he can’t change, too. But they love each other, and they always work it out. The mess is worth it to them.

“Hey, _chica_ ,” America says softly, nudging Kate’s elbow. “What’re you thinking about, huh?”

Kate smiles, drunk and sleepy-soft, and says, “Home.”

-

The next day she opens her comm screen and brings up the app for e-mail. She types her message, and then before she can second-guess herself, she hits send.

Four galaxies away, a message pops up in Clint Barton’s inbox.

-

_Hawkeye,_

_I miss you. When I get back, let’s talk, okay?_

_love,_  
 _ Hawkeye _

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. " _la maldita cantina entera_ " - "the whole fucking bar"  
> 2\. " _Vete a la chingada!_ " - "Go fuck yourself!"  
> 3\. " _Sinceramente no quería herir sus sentimientos, por favor_ " - "I swear, I didn't want to hurt your feelings, please - "
> 
> (apologies for any incorrect Spanish - it's not my first language)


End file.
